BMSG In The News

Berkeley Media Studies Group and its partners at Coleman Advocates, a San Francisco-based welfare rights group, are training a group of San Francisco parents to get their voices heard in the media, making sure the opinions and needs of ordinary citizens -- women and children in particular -- don't go unnoticed.

BMSG's Katie Woodruff commends the Chronicle for a front-page article that illustrated the connection between violence and economic conditions in East Palo Alto. Also promising, writes Woodruff, was city officials' recognition that increasing economic opportunity -- not police -- is key to reducing crime.

The proliferation of guns, increasing income disparities, the widespread availability of alcohol, and funding prisons over schools have created a recipe for youth crime. Youth did not create the policies that led to these conditions. Yet, as BMSG co-director Lawrence Wallack points out, society vilifies youth when these conditions prove harmful.

In response to an article regarding a KVUE experiment with crime coverage in Austin, BMSG's Lori Dorfman challenges KVUE to go even further. She submits that reporters should link their questions to an understanding of public health data on violence.

BMSG director Lori Dorfman takes on an Examiner editorial that urged the University of California Board of Regents to rescind its decision to abolish the use of preferential admissions. The editorial, she writes, rests on assumptions that the regents' action was politically motivated and violated academic freedom.